Onus on Centre to probe security breach

THE motto of the Indian Republic is ‘Satyameva Jayate’. This Sanskrit aphorism is an abridgement of a line in the Mundaka Upanishad that says: Satyameva jayate naanritam — Truth alone triumphs, not falsehood. We must truly bow our heads before the wisdom of India’s Constitution makers who chose it from an Upanishad which literally means the Head of all Upanishads (Munda in Sanskrit means head.) The message of this motto is further reinforced by where it appears — on our national emblem with its Dharmachakra or the Wheel of the Eternal Law. Dharmachakra also sanctifies our national flag. Truth and dharma, according to Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of our Nation, are one and the same. They are the pillars on which the nation stands. To weaken them is to weaken India.

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This being our exalted heritage, it is deeply distressing to see how truth is in danger of being made a casualty. Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed his life was in danger when he was stranded for 15-20 minutes during a journey from Bathinda to Ferozepur on January 5. True, there were some protesters at some distance along the road — about a kilometre away, according to Charanjit Singh Channi, the Chief Minister of Punjab. Modi chose to return to Bathinda, most probably because the pre-election rally he was scheduled to address in Ferozepur was going to be a flop due to the presence of a very thin crowd. Nevertheless, he surprisingly changed the narrative by hinting that he avoided a potential assassination attempt, and sarcastically thanked Channi for the fact that he came back ‘alive’.

If there was indeed such a conspiracy, the nation cannot take it lightly. After all, India has lost two former prime ministers to assassination plots that succeeded. The Supreme Court has now set up an independent committee, headed by a retired judge, to probe the incident. However, the subject of the probe cannot merely be whether there was a breach of the security protocols. Evidently, there was some lapse, but was the nature and degree of that lapse such that it would have endangered the PM’s life had he chosen to continue with the journey to Ferozepur?

To frame the issue in this manner is valid because neither Modi nor Home Minister Amit Shah (who described the incident in Punjab as a ‘Congress-made’ plot) alleged a threat to his life in proven instances of security breach in the past. For example, on December 17, Modi chose to travel slowly through the narrow lanes of Varanasi, his parliamentary constituency, with hundreds of people throwing flower petals on him from four-storied buildings flanking the road. At one place, he even asked the Special Protection Group (SPG) to open the door of his vehicle to receive a turban from a group of fans. Nothing could have been a clearer breach of security protocol — that too in the immediate proximity of the prime minister, and permitted by Modi himself.

Since Modi did not see a threat to his life when he himself broke SPG’s sacrosanct rules in Varanasi, but saw one in Punjab, this raises some troubling questions. These questions have become more germane in view of the subsequent attempts by Modi’s own supporters across the country to malign Punjab and Punjabis (subtext: Sikhs) for aiding a “Khalistani” plot. We should not forget here that the same people had blamed the 16-month-long peaceful farmers’ agitation near Delhi as a “Khalistani” conspiracy to destabilise the Modi government.

Question 1: If Modi could permit people almost body-to-body contact with him in Varanasi, why did he not approach the protesters in Punjab — or at least invite a small group of them to meet him after proper security check, hear them out, and pacify them with some assurances? This gesture would have surely heightened his reputation both within Punjab and nationally.

Question 2: How can India’s democratically elected prime minister — especially one who calls himself the nation’s ‘Pradhan Sevak’ or First Servant — be accessible only to his fans, and not to his critics? Isn’t it his ‘Raj Dharma’ to treat his supporters and opponents alike? This question is salient because, throughout the 16 months of the farmers’ agitation in which nearly 700 persons died, Modi did not meet them either at the protest site or invite their representatives to his office (which obviously would have posed no security threat to him).

Question 3: Don’t Indian citizens have the right to protest peacefully in order to highlight what they regard as their legitimate demands and grievances? Or does Modi deem every protest against him, especially in Punjab, to be potentially life-threatening for him?

Question 4: Is it right for the prime minister to pin the blame for any security lapse entirely on Punjab’s chief minister, especially since it was Modi who took the last-minute decision to abandon the original plan to travel by a helicopter and undertake a road journey?

Question 5: Have Modi’s supporters — especially those in the higher echelons of the RSS — ever cared to think of the long-term consequences of showing Punjab and Punjabis, especially Sikhs, in a bad light? Why are they constantly in search of internal enemies, doubting the patriotism of Muslims, Christians and Sikhs, and behaving as if our nation belongs only or mainly to Hindus? The onus now is on the Central government to pass the truth test and credibly establish the existence of an assassination plot. Failure to do so would suggest that there was some political motive to dramatise the situation. What

this might do to the PM’s image in the eyes of the people, or to his place in history, is less important. Far more important is what such recourse to falsehood would do to our society and our democracy.